I searched and searched but could not find a clean template for any of the Christen eagle paint schemes. I have the templates I used for my plane but they are down in a hanger in Texas. As I am in michigan atm getting them would be problematic.

However, Microsoft flight simulator X has a free Christen eagle package complete with texture maps for several Eagle patterns. So I just downloaded the package along with a program to convert DXTBMP files to bmp files that photoshop and illustrator could read (24-bit bmp).

I then brought the files into illustrator and created vector art for all the feather and stripe and eagle head patterns. Once I had them in vector art I could bring them into photoshop as smart objects and scale them to any size without loss of resolution. Tah Dah!

Worked great!

I just need to do a low poly partial engine to fill the area you can see through the air intakes and model out an interior.

I would put some rivet detail and panel line details in but I kinda cheated on the texture mapping. I just shot planner maps from the side and top and then split the left and right side and top and bottoms of the flight surfaces. I did not do any unwrapping at all. There is no overlap but it's hard to match up the panel lines the way I have done it. So I may declare victory and move on.

The model is all rigged as well. I have a single locator with canopy, aileron, rudder, elevator, prop rotation, prop pitch attributes that I can scrub to control the associated model component. I did not rig up the tailwheel as the chains present a bit of a problem. I need to remodel the chains anyway as I use a default torus for each link and as a result more then one half the total number of polygons in the entire model are in the two chains (like 360K polys! lol) With the chains remodeled the entire model both unsmoothed and smoothed will be reasonably compact.

~12k polys unsmoothed
~300k polys smoothed

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

In the gallery now nice work! If i'm ever in Texas i'd love to take it for a spin

Dave

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waddya mean you cant texture.
Looks great CT, I'm with Dave, if he's ever in Texas, I'll let him take me out in it for a spin..( heard that story about you crashing your mates plane once, kinda worried to let you take me out mate J/K)

In an aircraft, especially an aerobatic one, weight is everything. Burt Rutan, a famous aircraft designer, never used to put electric starters on his designs. When asked why he replied that they add to much weight and are UNNECESSARY. When ask how do you determine something is unnecessary?

He replied "It's simple. You take all the bits you are thinking of adding to the basic airframe and power plant and put them in a big pile. You then toss the big pile all into the air and anything that does not fall back down is fine to be added to the plane."

So what does that have to do with my nickname? Well, when I started flying aerobatics I was flying a big pig of an airplane called a Citabria. I had a friend that owned a Pitts S1S, a tiny very high performance plane, and he offered to let me fly it in a local competition (I came in second place that day by the way).

The tail wheel assembly on a Pitts or Eagle for that matter follows Burt's credo and is very lite and spindly. To put it in perspective the wheels on a typical shopping cart would be too heavy for a sport plane tail wheel.

Well when I landed - A PERFECT THREE POINT LANDING - I was surprised at just how well that Pitts tracked a perfect straight line down the runway! I had flown a 2 seat Pitts and they are really squirrelly to control on the ground at high speed. But man this guy was like it was on a rail!

When I came to a stop though it did not seem to want to move at all. Rather then plow the throttle to the wall I just shutdown the engine and climbed out. My friend was there on the spot, slapped me on the back and said "Nice landing CRASH!".

I was not sure what he meant until I looked back and saw I had furrowed a nice long gouge in the asphalt runway because the wheel from the tail wheel had popped off and the tail spring (that metal bar) had dug a nice long 800 foot gash in the runway.

Well although it is very common for the tail wheel to fail on these aircraft and would have most likely come off regardless who was flying it, the nickname "Crash" stuck and I decided to just go with it.

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675